THE FINAL WHODUNNIT 

What killed Dave? Was it the heart attack as he checked out of the hospital. A result of uttering words too perfect not to be immediately made his final ones by a massive coronary that left him crumpled on the floor. 

“Hate doctors. Looove nurses” 

Head hitting the tiles but probably already dead by then. A sight Andrea would only later describe as a mess to her nephew, who was on the phone with her, learning for the first time what had happened to his grandfather earlier that day. Hadn’t even known he was in the hospital. 

“A total mess. Don’t ask” 

Or had it maybe been the previous five days that had killed Dave? Bedridden with a purple face and not taking his heart pills. Not eating anything and no one seeming to think this was a bad sign, even though this was the same Dave who had once still taken his full English breakfast while looking nearly green from appendicitis. The same Dave who would scrape every smudge of egg yolk from his plate, no matter the stomach flu. And now this same man moaning over as little as the sight of soup. Wanting everything to be taken away immediately. No appetite at all and usually half asleep and somehow no one even thinking to let Andrea know what had happened.  

“The doctor’s said he suffered a brain bleed at least a week ago. A week ago!” 

So maybe it was the fall that had finally done him in. An accident that couldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone, not since his stroke had got him always going down the stairs backwards. No one able to convince him otherwise since it was now the only way he could make sure his good hand stayed firmly ahold of the bannister as he descended them. But a week ago, missing a step and tumbling all the way to the bottom and smashing his face on the corner of a table. Turning his whole face the color of a plum with eyes peering out. Misshapen and thick with blood like an English sausage . A face so bad you couldn’t have looked at it and not immediately known something was seriously wrong. 

“And they just put him to bed like that. Didn’t pick up the phone even though I’m just down the goddamned street. Just let him lay there dying. Couldn’t even call. Now, would you explain to me what the hell is wrong with these people?” 

Andrea claimed it was Bruce and her mother that were responsible. That it was negligence that ultimately killed her father and wasn’t shy in making this clear to her brother.  

But Bruce, when he talked about what had happened later on, didn't agree.  Didn’t think there should be any surprise at all about what ultimately killed their father. That it was hate, pure and simple.  

“I think Mom finally got her chance and took it. He was bedridden and she just hated him to death” 

He talked about how he couldn’t help but think about all that time he was all alone by himself in that bedroom, dying as it turns out, and how it must have finally dawned on him in there that it was no joke. Her hate was real. That she had always meant it and now he was totally fucked. 

Bruce shook his head. “Jesus Christ, just imagine being in that situation and only having Mom to save you” 

“And you, Bruce. You were there too” 

He nodded his head. Didn’t deny he was there, or that he was also to blame, but wanted everyone to remember what had been happening in that house for the last twenty years and how she had been pulling that same shit right up until the end. How even when her husband was sick and dying she couldn’t help herself, still talking to him in nothing but that weird voice of hers. The one that made her talk like a baby. That she would use whenever she was calling her idiot husband a useless son of a bitch. 

Only now she didn’t have to go all around the house hunting for him like a crazy person. She knew exactly where to find him. Went in there bugging him dozens of times a day, standing at the foot of his bed saying the most horrible things to him. Whatever she could think of to make sure he knew how much she hated him. Like making sure he knew how disgusting his bruised purple face was to her and how stupid it looked with his white hair sticking up on top. That it was uncombed and that he should be ashamed. That he looked like a thousand year old clown. That he was a do nothing asshole and he should get out of bed already. Going in and out of his room all day long, leaving for a few minutes, and then coming right back in to say the same things to him all over again. And all Dave could do as he lay there was moan and refuse his soup and feebly try to wave her away. 

“If you want to know what killed him, that’s what killed him. The fact that his wife was such a mean, miserable bitch” 

“And because you didn’t call me” 

Yes, that too, he admitted. Of course, of course. He never denied it. But as usual Andrea was completely missing the point of what he was trying to say and didn’t know what the fuck she was talking about. Bruce didn't even know why he was trying to explain it to her. She hadn’t lived in the house for so long, but pretended everything was like how she left it forty years ago. Wouldn’t believe their mother ever meant any of the things she had said.  

“It’s not like she actually hated him, Bruce. Not really. Who could have hated dad?” 

He had given her a good life, after all. She had nothing to complain about. 

JAMAICAN ICEBERG 

There have been claims made that they didn’t always hate each other like this. Family members old enough to remember them doing things together. Enjoying the company of one another. Talking in normal voices. Even went to Jamaica one time and spent twenty dollars to travel in a glass bottom boat. Something they only did because of Norma’s insistence, having grown tired of spending all of their free time sitting on the beach. Kept bringing up how that was something she'd like to do, even though she secretly worried the hull might shatter and let in all that warm water and drown everyone on board. Had been told by another tourist that the captain of the boat couldn’t even swim. Could already imagine those white helmets of the crew floating on the surface of the ocean. Cameras sinking to its bottom.  

“But if I left it up to Dave we wouldn’t have done anything at all while we were there, so I had to be brave” 

Everyone knew how Dave was. How he needed little else beyond his lawnchair and a cloudless sky and for it to finally be summer to be completely happy. Maybe some sunglasses for his big head to bend the arms out of shape, or a John La Carre book to read for the third time, but nothing else was needed. And so Jamaica, for him, was hardly necessary.  

But for Norma it was different. Norma wanted more. Norma wanted everything. 

“When they were younger, they did things. They would talk. She was always trying to get him to bring her places, but you know Dave, he’d really rather just sit in the car. And so eventually....” 

No one was denying that they were always very different from each other but, no, there didn't used to be so much hate. Didn't hate eachother, at all. Sometimes you would even come across a photograph of them laughing and eating dinner together. Drinking rum and pineapple juice out of coconut shells. Pictures from long ago when Norma still smoked and where she could be seen holding court over a group of friends with a cigarette between her fingers, her husband watching, looking like he might almost have been listening to what she was saying. 

“Norma just thought she deserved a more exciting life than he gave her” 

And so we talked of that time they went to Jamaica. When it didn’t seem so strange for them to do something like that, but all of us knowing that was a long time ago and how they hadn’t gone anywhere in years. Dave still with the same lawnchair and Norma never getting to see England again after all. Nothing left for her to do but watch her husband spread out under the sun in the backyard, year after year. Watching him grow darker and darker with every summer, almost as if he had just returned from travelling the continent of Africa without her. Watching him out there ruining yet another pair of her sunglasses, reading that book about spies he had already read a thousand times before.  And Norma no longer thinking of England at all. Not really even remembering it anymore. Only seeing one thing clearly now that they were old and there was nothing left to think about. 

“Of course she hates him, now. It’s become her whole reason for being, now. Now she’s a complete bitch. I’m just saying you have to remember, it wasn’t always this way” 

And we all agreed. Everyone remembered Jamaica. Norma saying the word bomboclaat for the first time and Dave tanned more than ever and how they almost used to like each other. All of us talking about how those were the good days as the smoke from tonights burning dinner filled the house. Got us barely able to see each other in a room at the other side of the house. All of us laughing anyways at how Dave was going to get the blackest pork chop of all. 

Here's an objective truth - Most Christians happen to be massive hypocrities.  The truth of this can be objectively discerned by reading some of what Jesus said about things like "pride", "making a show of your prayer", "casting stones", etc etc.  How does he wash away sin?  Forgiveness?  Mercy?

But Jesus was also a broke Jew pussy, so what does he know?

Aptly, I just saw this clip from Douglas Rushkoff yesterday where he touches on this problem of fundamentalist zealotry which has infected all of these Abrahamic religions:

Douglas Rushkoff wrote:

This literalism kills the interpretive dimensionality of a spiritual tradition as surely as scientism and materialism kills the humanities.  When we set things down in stone, when we lock down their ownership, assign them monetary value, make them material and absolute truths to defend, we lose the liminal, creative living human layers.  To hold anything with absolute and permanent certainty, we have to kill it.  And then we start killing other people too.

But Rushkoff, like Jesus, is just a filthy commie Jew too.

crumbsroom wrote:

Just the pride alone in submitting that your OBJECTIVE reasoning for Christianity's superiority is....Christ's blood?

Which gets into the contentious area of metaphorical and abstract interpretation.  What is this "blood" exactly?  Well, frequently since the graphically sanguine Passion of the Christ, many Christians see it more literally as the fleshy suffering of his corporeal persecution - even though Jesus himself, in several passages across the gospels, minimizes the suffering of the flesh as of any consequence whatsoever.  No, in Jesus' esoteric terms, this "blood" is a vitality which transcends flesh, it is an essence which is eternal outside of carnal existence.  And it is a spirit of mercy and humility which is lost on many of these so-proud Christians who feel the need to dominate their faith, as the person you quoted insisted.

crumbsroom wrote:

And of course Yoda probably is in complete agreement, so that post will be allowed to stand because Yoda can also OBJECTIVELY determine which political posts are a step too far (and of course I doubt he even views that the supposed observable betterness of Christianity as even being a political point in the first place...you have to consider the possibility that other religions, or no religions at all, are even a consideration to do that)

This is becoming less and less defensible.  Even sincere Christians have to recognize the currency of the religiously-infused culture wars underway.  To act like these are not expressions of religious-supremacy, at a time when America has just unilaterally struck a Muslim country with some explicit "Crusade" overtones from several of our top-ranking officials, from Hegseth to Huckabee, it is disingenuous to act like these are not inherently political expressions.  I would say the same about the jihadists on 9/11.  This is not about religious relativism.  This is a fundamentally political issue.

crumbsroom wrote:

One Battle is left wing propaganda

I will allow so much that PTA intended OBAA to be a decidedly pro-immigrant statement.  Which, for the record, also happens to be the authentically doctrinal Christian position on immigration.  (Quite objectively, in fact.)

crumbsroom wrote:

people only pretend to like Jeanne Dielman because a lesbian feminist made it.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that maybe this poster only pretends to hate Jeanne Dielman because a lesbian feminist made it.

crumbsroom wrote:

Not like this fuck brain idiot who loves Parasite because he claims it is a 'pro capitalist' film, even though he also claims the director is too stupid to even know it.

Well that is.....something.

But slaves never know how good they have it until White Jesus tells them so.  Wait, what was that about "the last will be the first", like some kind of reversal, like maybe that's what all of these desperately dominant Romans are scared of?  "Just keep 'em in your basement", they pray and fret.

Just changed the format of this one, so nothing new here.

INTERNATIONAL REFRIGERATOR OF MYSTERY 

Dave.  
International Man of Mystery.  
Every morning he would put on a suit after eating his breakfast, but no one thought much of where he went in it.  
Something to do with refrigerators.  
Maybe microwaves.  
It didn’t seem to matter.   

Instead everyone was mostly concerned with the fingerprints he’d left in the butter dish.  
Back when he was still in his pajamas and there was still butter clinging to his thumb and he would have looked ludicrous carrying a briefcase with him anywhere.  
Back before he got dressed.  
Before he drove off to go be somebody’s boss.  
Off to a job every morning where any details beyond his secretary telling him what a nice head of hair he had were hard to come by.  
Completely unknowable.  
Barely there. 
Not like anyone was asking.